Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a method for producing a β-sialon fluorescent material.
Description of the Related Art
Light emitting devices that emit light of various hues owing to the principle of the mixture of colors of light are being developed. Such a light emitting device includes a light source and a wavelength conversion member to be used in combination with the light source. The wavelength conversion member is configured to emit light with hues different from the hue of the light source when excited by the light from the light source.
In particular, light emitting devices composed of a light emitting diode (“LED”) combined with a fluorescent material are increasingly and widely utilized, for example, as backlights for liquid crystal displays or as lighting systems. When a light emitting device incorporates a plurality of fluorescent materials, a fluorescent material that emits light at short wavelengths, such as blue-green, green, and yellow-green, and a fluorescent material that emits light at long wavelengths, such as orange and red, may be combined, for example, to allow liquid crystal displays to have an improved color reproduction range and lighting systems to have an improved color rendering.
As examples of such fluorescent materials, aluminate fluorescent materials, silicate fluorescent materials, sulfide fluorescent materials, phosphate fluorescent materials, and borate fluorescent materials are known. As a replacement of these fluorescent materials, fluorescent materials that have a nitrogen-containing inorganic crystal as a host crystal in the crystalline structure, such as sialon fluorescent materials, oxynitride fluorescent materials, and nitride fluorescent materials, have been proposed. Such fluorescent materials exhibit small luminance decrease associated with temperature increase and have superior durability. A representative example of such fluorescent materials is sialon, which is a solid solution of silicon nitride. α-type sialon fluorescent materials and β-type sialon fluorescent materials, which have different crystalline systems from each other, are attracting attention. In particular, β-type sialon fluorescent materials (hereinafter also referred to as “β-sialon fluorescent materials”) are highly efficient, green fluorescent materials that are excited in a wide wavelength range of from near-ultraviolet light to blue light, and have a peak light emission wavelength in the range of 520 to 550 nm.
β-sialon fluorescent materials are, for instance, represented by a compositional formula: Si6-zAlzOzN8-z:Eu (0<z≤4.2). A β-sialon fluorescent material may be obtained as a sintered product, for example, by mixing silicon nitride (Si3N4), aluminum nitride (AlN), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) with europium oxide (Eu2O3), which serves as an activator, in a predetermined molar ratio, and sintering the mixture at around 2000° C. It has been described that heat-treating the sintered product in an inert gas, and acid-treating the resultant product will produce a β-sialon fluorescent material with high luminance (see, for example, JP 2005-255895 A and JP 2011-174015 A). A method of performing heating treatment separately twice at a high temperature to further improve the properties of the β-sialon fluorescent material to be obtained, and also a method of using, as a part of raw materials, a β-sialon fluorescent material obtained by sintering to enhance the luminance are known (see, for example, JP 2007-326981 A and JP 2013-173868 A).